Poisoning

Russia said on Thursday that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning, but the Palestinian ambassador to Moscow said an investigation would continue, Russian news agencies reported.

Israel said on Thursday it did not poison Yasser Arafat, making the denial after the Palestinian leader’s widow said Swiss forensic tests had proven he died from radioactive polonium poisoning in 2004.

Nine years after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and more than a year after Al Jazeera broadcast a report claiming he died of radiation exposure to polonium 210, the circumstances of Arafat’s death remain a mystery.

Forensic experts took samples from Yasser Arafat’s buried corpse in the West Bank on Tuesday, trying to determine if he was murdered by Israeli agents using the hard-to-trace radioactive poison, Polonium.